The first direct-to-disc album released by Sheffield. An extremely rare recording.
The LP that started the direct-to-master-disc audiophile craze in the 1970s. Produced in 1971, the performances were recorded directly to the lacquer master disc without the use of tape recorders. Some years ago when I first started looking for this album I spoke with one of the sound engineers that worked on it. He told me that there were no tape copies made during the recording sessions because this LP was also an experiment to find out if there was a market for Direct-to-Disc albums (which is another way of saying they didn't have the budget to pay for another sound engineer and all the additional equipment). And because of this, no CD version of this LP would ever be released by the studio.
So far as I know, all other Sheffield recordings have been released on CD using the tape backups made during the recording sessions. But not this one.
The remaining LPs are the only copies of these performances that we have.
Two notes about the rip. First, this is a recording of a live performance and things get banged and kicked around, chairs scrape the floor, and electronic gizmos bleep. Second, in my opinion the mic'ing on this recording is not up the standards shown on later Sheffield albums (I have almost all of them). The brass is flat sometimes, the guitar is muddled and lost in the background. And the performances are not quite as tight as they are on later recordings. This album is more about a promise of what was to come rather than a fulfillment of that promise. It's still very very good, but not stellar.
